Saab Cleans Customer RFI'

As in other industries the automotive sales setting is a triangle of corporate marketing, independent dealers and customers. And in automotive, where online customer RFIs and RFQs are increasingly common, both the OEM parent and the dealer are looking for quality data from which to generate hard leads.

"Somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 percent of people who purchase a vehicle do at least some portion of their research online," says Richard Amling, direct marketing analyst at Saab Cars USA, Inc.

The inquiries vary for Saab. A request for a brochure is typically handled by posted mail, and also kicks off email interactions detailing and updating buyer incentives. Decisions closer to the buying point, like a request for a test drive or quote, are channeled to Saab's 230 U.S. auto dealerships, where Saab has no interest in disintermediating these parties. "All the dealers are independent business people," Amling says. "Each one has a different philosophy on the best way to sell cars and the best way to close leads."

When an online request for a test drive or quote comes into Saab.com, the traditional response was to view it manually, and perhaps call the prospect if there was suspicion of missing data fields or a prank.

But this was not a guarantee that bad information would not get into the database. Recently Saab is automating the process with the selection of Data Quality Web Service, a validation tool from Melissa Data, and the vendor's recent add-on Data Point Validation (DPV), a tool based on a non-exclusive U.S. Postal Service data set that confirms whether the information makes up a unique postal delivery point.

Dealers like nothing less than getting leads that turn out to be false or faulty information, Amling says. "We try hard to convince the dealers that these are quality hard leads and if they make contact there is a percentage that will close. Eliminating as much of the junk as we can helps us with that argument."

Though it sounds like a small issue, Amling said Melissa's DVP cleaned things up "right away," freeing call center workers and speeding response times for customers that have high expectations online.

Information quality is a critical success factor not only for direct mail initiatives, but also for e-commerce and CRM applications generally, according to Jack Schember, marketing manager at Melissa Data. "The best place to cleanse or verify information is at the moment of capture, so that you can eventually send accurate, reliable data to your contact systems. A bad address can wreak havoc within your database."